Joint Forces (Wingmen Warriors 7)

So did you, his son's eyes accused silently. "I'll tell her I'm sorry."

Chris hefted the weight bar off and closed his eyes. Concentration or avoidance? Either way, the shutout was obvious.

Two sets of ten later, Chris replaced the bar, ducked around it and sat up. "No sweat about the summer job, Dad. I got a line on something at the squadron pool party. Spike told me he heard they were looking for lifeguards at the base pool. He said he thought I had a good shot at getting a slot."

"Ah, now I get it." J.T. sat beside his son. "Bathing suits."

A sheepish grin twitched across Chris's face, just like the time J.T. had caught him flushing Legos down the toilet.

He hadn't thought much about Chris and swimming, or that his son might have different sport preferences than his own interest in football and wrestling. But since Spike had once been a professional diver during his stint with the CIA, if the guy thought Chris could handle lifeguarding, then it must be so. "Not a bad way to spend the summer and earn money. Sure a helluva lot more fun than the way I spent my summers as a teenager. I'm lucky now to be doing something I enjoy."

Chris picked up his water bottle, rolled it between his palms. "Why did you go into the Air Force?"

"Where I grew up, it was either join the military or work in the steel mill. In my family, when we turned eighteen, we had to head out and earn a living. No hanging around to 'find yourself.' Six picked the mill. Three of us enlisted."

"But why did you enlist instead of doing what your other brothers did?"

"You're going to college."

"I know. But why did you decide to join up?"

"If you're thinking about the military, you need to know this isn't an easy job." J.T. scratched a hand up his tank top along his ribs where a phantom ache twitched. His eyes gravitated to his tome of Shakespeare's plays, currently tucked sideways between his ratchet set and buzz saw. "Be sure you're called."

"Were you called?"

"Not at first."

"Huh?" Chris's jaw slacked. "No way. I thought you lived for this stuff."

"I do. Now." Or God knows he would have never pulled his family through the moves and stress. "Back then, I just wanted out of that town. I joined for the GI Bill, planned to get a degree, thought after that I'd work in some office. Hell, I'd run the whole damn steel mill."

"So why aren't you?"

"Because once the airplane took off, I heard the call." He could still feel the rush of that first training flight, the lift, the sense of purpose, the chance to make things happen and not just have things happen to him. "After that, I decided I didn't want to get out for the four years it would have taken me to get a degree. Why should I anyway? I was doing exactly what. I wanted."

He'd had more money, security and benefits than when growing up. He hadn't counted on meeting Rena and wanting to give her more.

"And you met Mom."

Was the kid a mind reader? "Yeah, I met your mom."

"How do you know when you meet her? The one?"

J.T. studied his son, used some of that Rena-insight stuff he'd just started 'to glean. And ah crap, sometimes it was better not knowing. The poor kid sure as hell wasn't the guy who almost knocked up the girl.

But he loved that girl anyway.

Clasping his hands between his knees, J.T. searched for the words to make this one better for his kid. A hopeless deal when he couldn't even make things better for himself in the woman department. "You've gotta go with your gut on that one, son. There's no clear-cut answer. You just know when you see her."

And wasn't that the truth? Rena had been so hot that day, still was. But honest to God, he'd fallen for her laugh.

"So if Mom was the one, then why did you decide to split?"

"Now, there's the million-dollar question." He tugged his weight-lifting gloves tighter on his hands. "Sometimes right for one person is wrong for another. Sometimes you meet the right person at the wrong time. Sometimes it's the right person at the right time and you do all the wrong things because you're a dumb ass. Basically, it's a real crapshoot getting all the rights lined up at the same time." He glanced sideways at his son. "Any of that make sense?"

"Yeah, it does." Chris stood, crossed to the weight rack, lifted the curl bar. "So what do I do about it … if I have that problem, right person, wrong time?"

"Hell, Chris." J.T. joined him and started alternating curls. "If I had the answer to that one, do you think I'd still be sleeping across the hall?"